Musicians You Should Know: Alma Mahler


Basic Facts

Born: August 31, 1879, Vienna, Austria
Died: December 11, 1964, New York, New York
Type of Performer: Composer
Genre: Classical

About Alma Mahler

Alma Marie Schindler was born into a wealthy, artistic family in Vienna in 1878. Her father was a painter and her mother was a singer; Alma learned piano and studied composition. She would go on to become famous as a muse for important artists rather than to be known for her own talents, and there is some speculation about whether she was just a "groupie" or whether she used her relationships with these men as a channel for her creativity when she was restricted in her own movements by societal norms. In 1902, she married composer Gustav Mahler, nineteen years her senior (but she was never a fan of his music). At his behest, she suspended her own composition career during their marriage. Years later, Sigmund Freud told Gustav he should let Alma take up composition again, and Gustav edited and published some of her works. Only fourteen of her songs survive, and as far as musicologists know, she ceased composing after Gustav's death. Given her reputation for falsifying and doctoring her voice in her diaries and letters, her compositions might be considered one of the only "authentic" versions of her that we have.

After Gustav Mahler's death in 1911, Alma moved back to Vienna. She had an affair with painter Oskar Kokoschka, then married architect Walter Gropius in 1915. They divorced after World War I, and Alma married writer Franz Werfel in 1929. The couple moved to the United States in the late 1930s to escape Nazi Germany. They settled in California, a hotbed of expat European composers and musicians, and Alma held salons and benefitted from her connection to Gustav Mahler. She died in New York at age 85.

Listen

Four Songs for Soprano and Orchestra, performed by the Brabant Orchestra


Further Reading

Comments